S02E03: What Money Mindset Means For Budgets

Sam and Matilda are talking production and marketing budgets this week!

Next week they will be discussing the best ways to spend little to no money, whilst still progressing with indie publishing. 

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with:

Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/3QHym3m

Most recent book:

Heart of the Wolf (Moons & Magic Book 2) https://amzn.eu/d/4HecH3a

MATILDA IG: @matildaswiftauthor

Website: www.MatildaSwift.com

Book to start with: https://books2read.com/TheSlayoftheLand (book #1 of The Heathervale Mysteries)

Most recent book: https://books2read.com/ButterLatethanNever (book #3 of The Slippery Spoon Mysteries)  

Mentioned on the show:

JOIN THE PEN TO PAYCHECK DISCORD: https://discord.gg/w7BjxmeXfF

Transcript:

Welcome to your next step of the Self Publishing Mountain.

I'm Matilda Swift, author of Quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

And I'm Samantha Cummings, author of Young Adult Books About Magic, Myths and Monsters.

I've written the books, changed their covers, tweaked their blurbs, tried tools from a dozen ad courses, and I'm still not seeing success.

Now, we're working together to plot and plan our way from barely making ends meet to pulling in a living wage.

Join us on our journey where we'll be mastering the pen to snag that paycheck.

Hello and welcome to Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Matilda Swift here with my co-host, Samantha Cummings, and we're here to write our way to financial success.

We're two indie authors with over a dozen books between us and still a long way to go towards the quit the day job dream.

If that sounds familiar, listen along for our Mastery Through Missteps journey.

Each week we cover a topic to help along the way.

Today, this week's topic is budget for production and marketing.

Before that, what are your wins and whinges of the week?

Oh, I've got so many wins.

I'm really riding on a high.

Before we started recording, we were just basically blubbing about how much we're enjoying January at the start of this year.

It's so good.

So yeah, nothing but wins.

My editing has been so fun and I'm reading things and I'm literally like reading the manuscript and gasping and pointing at my own work, being like, this is so good.

So I'm really enjoying it.

And I'm just like, I'm on track, I think, for what I've got on my schedule.

So that's been going really well.

All of my socials are going really well.

I'm posting loads of things on TikTok and Instagram that I just love.

I'm having such a good time.

Like ridiculous.

It's so good people are talking about them.

Like everyone is on TikTok and these socials are so amazing.

Yeah, it's so much fun.

I feel like I've really found, like I don't want to say my niche, but I just, I'm like, I'm in the pocket as some people would say.

I'm just like, I'm there.

I just know what I'm doing now and it feels really good.

It's making me very happy.

And I also want to say the Discord is making me very happy.

So we launched a Discord for this podcast and we have, I think, 19 ish members so far.

And it's so much fun.

And then my own young adult Indie Authors Discord is just, they're just like two places where every day I'll check in and happily chat and see what people are up to.

And it's just exactly what I wanted those things to be.

So I just feel like really, everything just feels so good.

And I'm so happy about how this year has started.

My whinge is related to today.

I'm still like financially, I still feel like I'm on the back foot.

And I know that I want to start doing ads in February.

And while I am doing ads in February, I don't want to, I'm gonna do ads in February.

But I also have the voice saying, don't do ads, don't spend money.

So I need to give myself a talking to and try and get through whatever money block I've got going on.

That's my only winch.

Is that related to like sensible like reasons as in, a lot of ads, it's easy to make profit if you've got a series and it's harder with the, you know, books you've got.

Or is it just like spending money is scary?

I find spending money scary.

And I am working through that.

It's like a slow and steady thing that I'm going through.

I also, which we'll talk about like later on in the podcast, also have yet to see kind of like any positive benefits from spending money on ads.

But the only way to change that narrative is to continue.

So I know these things is just a case of like proving myself right or wrong.

I don't know which one.

Proving myself something.

Yeah, I'm fine with it.

Let me be your role model because this week, I have got ads that are like making money.

I mean, cannot.

It's like I've sort of accidentally walked into parallel universe, where previously I think I have tried, which is like, no, cannot.

And I would like I've tried all the things, I followed all the instructions, I've done it as it's meant to be, and then it's like cannot.

And, and now it's just like, it's like I'm in a parallel universe where it just works.

And I don't understand.

But like I spend money on ads and the people buy my books.

And I think that sounds ludicrous, but that is not a position I've been in before.

And it's so exciting.

And it feels like I'm cheating, but in a great way.

Like I love cheating.

Oh yeah, cheating is great.

That's my big thing this year.

I'm trying to live life on easy mode, like as much as possible, everyone make my life easier.

I'm doing it.

So even if this is cheating, you have somehow actually cheated, don't care.

I mean, conversely, I have tried doing Amistad this week and it's not serving.

I was like, well, fine.

Can't win everyone.

Yeah.

But yeah, this is Facebook ads.

In the Discord, I've talked about it a lot.

That has definitely really helped as well.

Just having to articulate what I'm looking at and what my goals are, rather than have this amorphous, again, as always goal of like, somehow make millions and don't know how.

That's never even my literal goal.

If I had to articulate, that wouldn't be it.

But my goal is never articulated.

I've never had like actual metrics of what I want to achieve.

It's always been what I'd like to just put a pound in and then get like a thousand pounds out.

Is that a thing?

I have nothing reasonable at all.

So I have very specifically measured two different metrics.

All the books are from pre-order right now.

So I got books one, two, and three in pre-order.

And I wanted to make money assuming a sell-through that is lower than my normal sell-through because this is coming from cold leads.

So a lower sell-through, but a reasonable sell-through to books one, two, and three, that I would break even on that, which sounds like not making money, but the books are on pre-order and you can't make any page read money on that.

So it's like, all I want to do is get a sense of how to make ads that when those two things are no longer true, so when the books are for sale and when page reads are available, they will definitely make a profit and I just want to get some data.

I feel so much better after Helen's conversation last week.

If you haven't listened to this episode, listen to it.

You will feel like things are possible with money.

Helen just made it sound so reasonable and simple.

So I'm just trying that and all I need to do is get data.

And I was really prepared to lose money and think, I've listened to some things recently where the same message keeps coming up of like the first thousand pound you spend on ads is just the cost of learning how the ads platform work, which I've spent that thousand pounds in the past.

So maybe I've put my money in.

But I kind of thought now I'm the first time I'm really trying it, that would be when it would start.

But I part of it is just that like, everything is a little bit better.

So my covers are a bit more to market my blurb.

I mean, that's not a little bit better.

My blurb is really good.

And I know it's myself, but I'm so proud of it.

My blurb is so good.

But like my categories are right, my keywords are right.

I've got a back catalog, I've got books on my release.

Like I have just ticked so many boxes.

I've clearly just ticked enough boxes that finally it's tipped over that point where people are saying, yeah, I'll give that a try.

Even if I've never heard anything about this author, even if I've never seen them before, that's a series that looks like it's for me.

And the reviews are coming in from the art readers and they're great as well.

So I also had the worry that I would sell a bunch of books and everyone hates it and that they would give it terrible reviews.

I think that's not gonna happen.

So it feels, I know we say this many weeks, it feels like a week of just nothing but wins.

This feels like every other week has just been nothing.

The Discord is also another huge win.

I love being in there.

It feels like a space where it's perfect for me.

And I think that's really interesting.

I know people really love some Facebook groups or some other sorts of way of communicating.

I was like, this is exactly right for me.

It's asynchronous.

You can just hop in and out when you want.

So there's no pressure of applying at a certain time.

You can almost use it to sort of talk to yourself.

So I've used it for the Facebook thread to chat to myself.

Some people ask questions.

That's made me think about certain things, but there's no pressure.

You're just trying to chat about things.

My favorite channel is the No Stupid Questions channel, because it feels like such a release, like a release to have that there.

To ask really stupid questions.

Like we've had a couple of questions asked in there that really aren't stupid questions.

They're just questions that weren't around when everyone was talking about it.

And so it feels like, oh, I can ask my own stupid question there.

And I did think about one today when I'm like, Amazon's not serving.

I was like, can I just ask why it's not serving?

No, there's not a good answer to that.

I need to figure some things out.

But because I actually thought, yeah, I was like, no, I need to figure some things out, and then I will ask a more specific question.

But it just, everything is improving in all ways, which is not something I, people normally associate with January, or, you know, with life.

Yeah.

It's so good.

Yeah, I know.

It's, yeah, I'm just loving January.

Well, I say loving January.

It's almost over.

I can't believe how fast it's gone, but, yeah, it's been a great month.

We beat the January blues and we're going to continue this way.

I'm not getting blue.

It's fine.

So, we can get into the podcast thanks to our chat with Helen Golden last week.

We are now fully fledged financial gurus.

Do you feel that's true?

Sorry, I wrote that and I made you say it.

I wondered if you'd read it about the check.

Wait, we did.

We are fully fledged financial gurus.

We are apparently are fully fledged financial gurus.

Okay, I'll write that home.

How are we using this money know-how to budget for our production and marketing costs?

Now to answer the question I posed myself.

Yes.

Yes, I think when we planned out this episode, planned it a few weeks ago, we try and plan a few at a time, so we kind of got a sense of where we're going.

And in my head, I had one thing to talk about and now following Helen's chat, I'm really trying to think productive about gathering data, and that feels so different to me.

And to one extent, I have been gathering data in terms of my budgeting.

So about half of the last year, maybe, I made a list of all my expenses.

And that was everything in my publishing life, which is things like book cover costs, costs of things like going to the SPS conference every year, and trying to gather everything together, and also costs of my life.

So things like putting in the cost of my cats, like their vet bills, and even things like approximate, like dental checkups.

And lots of things I thought were large enough expenses that I wanted to make sure I would have them in the bank if I wanted to quit my job and go full time.

This is how much money I absolutely have to have because I'm not going to go to the dentist.

I'm also not going to give up getting my nails done because I enjoy it and there's I'm out of work if I'm going to have I want to have the things I enjoy.

So I made myself that list and I kind of thought today we'll be talking about things like that.

And we will talk a little bit about it.

But in my mind, that's not really where the focus of budgeting for marketing and production is.

I've definitely got a really strong sense of my production budgets now.

So I budgeted in my annual budget for four books, though, interestingly, I do think I would like to get up to more than four books a year if I were publishing full time.

And I think I could do that easily as well.

But if I did that, my cover and editing costs, I think come to about 1300 a year pounds.

So that's a small fixed cost.

There's nothing I could do to reduce that.

If I published twice as many books, it would cost twice as much.

But that is fine.

All I have to do is factor that in.

There's other fixed costs such as that really, just to an extent count for production.

Or I would count them against production in terms of where they see my business.

So things like book funnel, like that.

I, you know, it's sort of marketing cost, but really it's like, it's essential to having the books.

I put in that packet of my head.

But then in terms of marketing budget, interestingly, I found in that budget, I had set specific money goals to spend.

And one was spend a thousand pounds on the launch of this new series, which I had never looked at it again, so I wrote that.

And that's sort of, it's not quite where I've ended up, but I think where I've ended up actually is wanting to, so I've got savings.

So wanting to actually kind of spend money in a way that I am just practicing increasing budget and seeing where that gets me without making huge amounts of loss.

Like I'm not just increasing budget for no reason, I'm increasing budget with reason and seeing, could I get to the stage where I was spending, you know, what seems to me an enormous amount of day, like spending three figures a day just feels like, whoa, high watering.

And I'm not there, but could I increase my ads as long as they're profitable to that and feel comfortable?

And so that's kind of how I'm thinking about budgeting at the moment in terms of I'm just trying to gather data towards like, what would be a reasonable budget for a series launch like this?

I'm gonna guess that feels like you're at a very different stage.

Yeah.

Thinking about where I'm at, I was gonna say, do you have any questions that would help me think through my processes?

No, not really, because I think you always kind of come at things from a very methodical place.

I can't think of anything that I would ask that would make you what you've planned better.

I think because you have savings, which I do not, you are definitely able to look at what you've got and decide how much of that you're going to push into the business, which is completely different to where I am, whereas I can only push in how much extra I have from my day job income.

So we're at very, very separate, different places.

And I think we probably both represent a lot of people.

There are probably a lot of people who have got savings and they will save up and then spend.

And there's people like me who just have to spend as they go.

We've got episodes coming up with both those groups.

We've got an episode coming up like how you get started with no money and how you get started with plenty of money.

And both are kind of difficult places because I have had this, I've got the savings.

I've had it for a while thinking, this is my savings to invest my business and not known how or when to invest it.

So I think for me, my kind of budget goal at the moment is to say, I'm going to take a thousand pounds out of that savings and spend it and maybe not make it back.

And I am at the moment making it back, but like spend it without necessarily saying it has to make its money back.

It is a learning fund that I'm going to spend on figuring out what works and what doesn't work for a launch.

And I spent part of it on things like Goodreads giveaway, which like, who knows what that does?

I don't know.

So if I've got like 1200 people for the book, which is maybe good, but I don't know if they're even Cozy readers, are they going to read the book when they if they win, when they put reviews in?

I don't know.

It was not expensive enough to make me think, oh, that's awful.

And it's only a few days out of budget if I were, you know, running my ads on a book of budget.

So I don't know.

But I felt like having said I want to take money out of my savings to do this, it felt like I'm going to try and see what that does.

I'll see if I can figure out if that's worth it.

And the same for NetGalley.

I was like, I'm going to put money to that and see how it goes.

And that has felt really liberating.

And I think taking a pot of money, saying like, I'm going to take a thousand pounds, feels like and I wasn't that logical about it when I first started looking back though, I clearly in back of my head had that because I've made this note to myself months ago.

And I have been acting as though I've got like, sort of permission to spend my savings as an experiment and as a data test.

Which feels great.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's, years and years ago, before I bought my flat, I would have had, I would have been in the same situation.

And I remember the idea of, because I had like thousands and thousands of pounds in the bank because I was living at home and it was great.

And spending a thousand pounds on something to me was not really that big a deal.

And, oh, you know, flush with money.

Flush, so I was so flush with money.

So I have both these mindsets.

I know like way back then when I had the money, I would have spent it no problem.

Now I have the money, but it's like, I can only borrow from myself a little bit at a time.

So that last year I spent like about, well, over 500 pounds on ads.

And then obviously buying covers and paying for edits.

So I would have spent over a thousand pounds on everything.

And that was doable.

And I made some money.

I didn't make a lot, but it was all like broken up little bits of spending.

And that to me, I think is what maybe causes me some of like the mental blocks that I have is that I feel like every month, even that I put specific amounts every way into an ads bucket, an ads pot in my business account, to spend.

That's kind of all there.

And that feels good, but I think I still need to figure out an exact amount that I want to take from myself every month.

And I haven't quite got to that point where I'm just taking money from it.

I'm just at the moment spending things as the bills come in.

And that's definitely how I've done it in the past, which is ridiculous when I have money in the bank.

And also maybe not really consider how I was spending it.

Not that I was frittering, but I wasn't thinking, is it worth me putting another book out in a series because it's not earning money?

Do I want to buy another cover and edit another book?

Is that a good business investment because I didn't have to?

And she's like, well, I can, so let's do it.

I think what I want to do over the next, like for the first quarter of the year, I think even though I've got a book coming out, but it's kind of basically already paid for, so that's fine.

I want to, for the first quarter of the year, start putting money into a new pot.

And after quarter one is over, looking at that money that I've put away and then distributing it, because I've got a big book launch coming out later in the year, distribute, like you have, like saying, I've got this thousand pounds.

I want to put like a thousand pounds into an account over the next few months, which I can afford to do, like I can afford it.

It's just that it will take me incremental payments.

And then I feel like by April time, I will be in the way you are now.

So I know that I'm moving forwards and it's fine.

It's just a different process to get there.

I know how much my productions cost.

I know how much money I'm spending on ads.

So I have figures.

I just don't have...

I know what Helen was talking about last week when she was saying, oh, you just look at your previous numbers and you make calculations.

And I looked at my numbers and my calculations were the opposite way.

I wasn't spending this to get this.

I wasn't spending a tenner to get 15 quid.

I was spending 15 quid and making two pounds.

You know, my stats are all the wrong way.

And that was a little bit demotivating, but also refreshing to look at that.

And I have always been scared to look at numbers and money, but I didn't actually have the fear when I was looking at it.

It was just like, oh, okay, they're the numbers.

And that felt really good.

Like I, even though it wasn't positive, it is positive emotionally, because I wasn't put off by it.

I just realized that I am in a completely different place than other people.

I found that so frustrating in the past years when a lot of the financial advice around figuring out how to invest and figuring out what your books are going to do.

So much of it is like look at your past sales data and see what's going to happen next.

And I think for people like Helen, it was so refreshing to talk to Helen and be like, okay, I now 100% see where that makes sense.

Like I can see for you, who's run a business like a business from the beginning, you were just so like preparing yourself for that way of organizing things.

So saying, I am going to write books exactly to market, I'm going to write a series, I'm going to advertise it, I'm going to spend this much money on learning these things.

I'm going to trial XYZ and look at the outcomes of those.

And then I'll have that data to then say, okay, it's worth me investing this money here, this money here.

It was before, I think I have always imagined like people were doing the same, like nonsense mess that I was doing.

And then be like, and now I have data.

And now I decide how to spend money in future.

And it's like, no, it's people like Helen.

And it was so lovely just to hear someone be like, this is how I did it, this is how you end up in the position where you can make data decisions like this, and financial decisions like this.

And now it kind of freed me to say, okay, what I've done in the past was not at all like that.

Like I just was not working like a business.

I don't have the data like that.

So what I need to do is build that data for myself.

And that is not a failure of the past.

That is just where I'm coming from.

And now I understand that it is worth putting money in purely to build data, right?

Like that's all every tech company does is they're just data companies.

They're trying to get your data.

That is the most valuable commodity on earth.

I don't really know why.

Who needs data to sell yourself, I guess.

But like, anyway, data is like important, apparently.

People like to know what cereal I eat.

If you're a data company, none.

I have eggs for breakfast.

But if I'm forced to choose, shreddies.

But anyway, like people want the data.

The things that you learn.

I know.

I mean, at heart, I'm obviously a Weetos girl, but that is not a grown up cereal.

And I can't be trusted to eat Weetos.

I'm like a box at a time person.

But and that's something probably Facebook knows about me already.

But there's just, I think I want to be, I want to be more Mark Zuckerberg.

I want to be like data is king.

And I will pay money for data because it will, I can then choose how to invest my money in future.

Rather than be like, is this series good?

Or is the ad bad?

Is the cover bad?

I've tested nothing and I don't, I know nothing.

I'm just like wandering around like a little, like lost fawn in a forest being like, what book should I write next?

What book should I invest money in?

I'm not in a Disney movie.

I'm like a business lady in a smart suit.

And I am the get-gooter.

Romy and Michelle are over here.

Oh my goodness, like living the dream.

But I would give anything.

I want, that's what we should wear to SBS.

Some Romy and Michelle.

We were previously talking about what outfit should we wear to, to like, you know, cement our brand.

Yeah.

But who's Romy?

Who's Michelle?

You know what?

We get sidetracked by this.

I can't get discussion.

That is a podcast conversation.

But watch out for us in summer.

We'll be Romy and Michelle.

We will be lying about inventing post-its.

Because that is just the best line of a tale.

I love it.

Yeah.

Great film.

If you haven't watched it, please watch it.

Oh my goodness.

I watched it at the cinema.

That's how cool I am.

I think I must have, because I was definitely, like I remember being a fan from, yeah, from like the initial get-go.

Sorry to have derailed the conversation.

I can't remember what the conversation was about anymore.

No, but I now 100% see how to do the next steps, which is such a change for me.

And part of that is just it's come at the right time for me.

I think if you're listening to, if you're listening to the last episode and you're like, I still don't know what to do.

I feel like I wish I was more like Helen.

We all do.

Wouldn't we like to be?

I know.

It was inspiring.

And then I looked at my own stuff and I was like, I am, I'm not Helen.

That's fine.

No, but I think it is really something that we don't talk about enough.

It's like some people who are self-published successes quite quickly, come from another industry where they have already built the skills that they need.

And that's not something I didn't get that from.

I worked in education for a long time.

You don't get self, like you don't get business knowledge in education.

I'm really good at teaching people to read.

I'm so good at it, but that's not going to help me run ads.

Unless people can't read and then they don't want books.

Yeah, this is a very deviating conversation.

I think it's just because I feel so everything I've worked on at once right now.

Like I feel like I'm at a whole new phase.

And I really want to be careful with this, right?

We've said this whole danger of this year, this is the danger of Act Two, is feeling like you know exactly what you should do.

And then if a crash hits, you are absolutely derailed.

And I'm fine.

I want to be really fine with and I want to be really aware of things that can seem like they're going right now, like the ads are going well.

It could be like the next two days, I think they tank and I'm spending money and not getting any money back.

And I'm like, Oh, I didn't know what I was doing after all.

I am a thorn in the forest.

No, I'm not.

I am experimenting, I'm learning.

I am here to make mistakes and learn things from them.

I am so good in every way.

I'm perfection.

Yeah, you are perfection.

I think that's the thing that has definitely, I've been like, percolating like this, all this information has been going in.

And I feel like I take a long time to process information.

And I'll give you just a little kind of fun story about this.

I don't know if you've ever seen those wooden puzzles where you break them apart, then you've got to try and figure out how to get them back together again.

I absolutely hate them.

I've got no fundamental perception.

I can't do them.

Exactly.

So it's difficult.

And I'm good at some of them, but I have had my boss has a whole pack of them.

And we kind of play across the desk.

I'll break them apart because he can't figure out how to take them apart.

I'm really good at breaking them because I'm great at breaking stuff.

And he then puts them back together.

And we had one in particular that he couldn't figure out how to put back together.

So he put it on my desk.

And for like two or three months last year, I promise this is going somewhere, two or three months last year, I had all the pieces on my desk.

And every now and again, I'd pick them all up and try and put them together and it would fall apart.

And I just throw them to the side and carry on working.

And it was just like something that I did like a fidget thing.

I kid you not, last week, I think it was the start of last week, I looked at these pieces of like these wooden pieces on my desk, and I picked them up and I slotted them together as though I knew exactly how it was supposed to work.

And I just kind of sat there looking at it.

And my boss looked over at me and said, have you just done that?

And I was like, I have the information finally made it through.

So this is how my brain works.

It looks at the situation.

And then I know like in the back of my mind, calculations, the hamster is running really fast on the wheel.

And eventually everything starts to make sense.

And like the wooden puzzle, I know that I'm on the cusp of figuring some stuff out.

And I don't know 100% what that stuff is, but I know that there's like an epiphany coming about spending money and ads.

I can, I'm working towards it without really realising it, but also on purpose.

All of this makes sense.

This is how my brain works.

It's chaotic.

You don't know how the puzzle is going to go together, but you are continuously looking with it, fiddling at it, being like, this puzzle is the puzzle I should be fixing right now.

And I don't know how the pieces go together at all, but I know that they do.

Yes, yeah, that's exactly it.

Like I know that they will slot together and my brain will eventually see the pattern and do it.

So I'm not too scared about it.

I'm...

You're the person who's made the extended metaphor today.

You're the complete metaphor person.

It's not me.

Yes.

Had to be me at some point.

No, I'm taking it as a win.

I feel like I have just slotted these together, but if I took it apart again, I couldn't put it back together again.

That's where I'm at right now.

And that is a really legitimate phase of learning, is like, I have done it once, I couldn't teach somebody else, I don't know how it works, but I know I've got a sense now of like how to get there.

And I'll have to keep practicing to get better and better and better.

Yeah, it's so interesting how I feel about this current series is that like, I want to talk about numbers specifically.

So I set myself a target of, I've got three books in pre-order coming out February, March, April.

And I really wanted to hit two targets that are really new for me.

So previously, I've never set targets for like pre-order numbers or sales numbers, because I just had no idea how to set these targets.

And I thought what I just want to do is pick some numbers that felt like a big goal, but not a crazy goal.

So I went to get a hundred ARC readers, which like previously I've had a small, maybe like a dozen people from my newsletter, like a long time ago as ARC readers, and maybe a couple of them left reviews.

And I didn't really know how to do anything about that.

And I thought it's not really worth the effort of doing an ARC team.

And I just, you know, took myself out of it.

And so I have got a hundred ARC readers.

And I got about half those from my newsletter, doing a proper like call out.

You can join the team, sign up here, did a Google form.

And then I joined NetGalley, and I've got more than half that number from NetGalley.

So, and this is just people who have got the book.

Not to say people can leave reviews.

That was not a number, I can't control that.

But I can control how many ARC readers I find.

So I want to be better at things I can control.

So I've already got nine reviews on my Goodreads, which feels fantastic.

The book is out in over three weeks.

And yeah, nine really good full reviews, one of which is in like full on rhyme.

It's the best thing I've ever had in my life.

Like my books are rubbish compared to this.

This this review is maybe the best thing I've ever read.

So it's such a delight.

And yes, a really detailed book for reviews.

And so I hit that metric, and it's had the outcome that I couldn't be happier.

And the other metric I want to hit was I want to have a hundred pre orders, which I don't want to devalue this by saying like, oh, some people say that's nothing.

But some people would say, you know, oh, I'm aiming for a thousand or whatever.

Like, but that's irrelevant to me, because a hundred to me felt like it's bigger than I've had in the past.

I've had in like a midway through a series, I've had a good number, which I hate people being caged in a good number.

It was like 54 or 59.

Like, I've had a number that I felt like, oh, that's really great.

It's growing.

People like it.

I didn't do much promo for it.

It's just my newsletter list.

So I was like, I want to have a hundred, because that feels like a new frontier.

And I feel like I really want to capture some new readers.

I haven't had a release for over a year.

So my own newsletter list may be feeling a little bit burned.

I've like, Oh, I don't know how consistent releases.

I put out to them a while ago and I got some pre-orders from them.

But I was like, I'm never going to make a hundred just for my newsletter.

They're not picking up at a fast enough pace.

And a lot of my newsletter, a lot of my readers in general are KU readers.

So I know that it will pick up, but it's just like, it was hard to get people to get pre-orders.

And from them, I already had more pre-orders than the first in the series that I've had from the series.

So like, that's great.

But I started doing ads on the pre-order, so on this Facebook ads.

And I'm currently at, with over three weeks ago, or maybe over two weeks ago, two weeks ago, I am at 81 pre-orders, which just feels like 100% I'm going to achieve it, and I'm going to smash it.

I'm going to smash this goal that was like, a goal that felt big but doable.

And I have done, I'm going to do the big thing, which feels great.

And I can't remember what my point was originally, who knows?

Something to do with goals and feeling great, presumably.

Oh, yes.

But oh, so I achieved these goals.

And kind of as I'm on weight these goals, I've been thinking like, you know what, I think I could do it again.

I think I could do this again, but better.

I think I'm learning from this.

That's what it was, is that I don't feel so attached to serious success that I'm going to live and die by it, which in the past, I think I have felt, not that strong, that's too strong, but as in I felt like, oh, I've really put my whole self into series and I'm trying my best and I've tried something and I'm not sure it's right and I hope people like it.

And it's like, and what if they don't like it?

And they never tried, do I try a different, no, I don't have any of those worries.

I feel like I know what I've done right in the series.

I think the things I could do better, I think I can learn from everything in this series.

And I think I could turn around in six months and make an even more successful series.

And that feels like I have never felt that way in my life, maybe about anything.

This feels really good.

Yeah, and so that just, that feels like a real mindset shift for me, of just feeling like I'm only going to become more successful, which is just so good.

That's it, we are climbing the hill.

So even though things seem like not as great as maybe we thought they were, and things still seem hard because like we do this podcast, and sometimes it feels like we're trying to tell people like how to do things rather than we're trying to show people what we're doing.

So sometimes I do get that I sometimes feel bad, like, oh, like we're doing this podcast, and I feel like I am not as good as maybe people think I am, but that's not what this podcast is for.

I'm not good at the business part.

That's why we're doing the podcast.

That's the whole point.

We're too busy being rich business leaders, we've invented post-its.

If you didn't invent a post-it, you didn't invent a post-it.

I mean, the amount of post-its I have, you would think I invented them.

It's crazy.

But they're such a good invention.

They're the world's best invention.

I love them.

They really are.

Yeah, I think it's fun to remember that we are in the testing phase.

We're doing this the whole point of this year for us is, we're going to make mistakes, we're going to throw money at stuff, but we are also going to do better every single time.

Like setting yourself a target for 100 arcs, 100 pre-orders, and saying that you don't think it sounds like a lot.

But if that's more than you've ever done, that's the only thing that you could do is just do more.

And then the next one that you do, you maybe do 200, and then it's all relative to what you've done in the past.

So I think that's amazing.

I think the fact that you've done so well is just testament to how much work you've put into everything over the past 12-ish months.

Yeah, and I think that's amazing.

One thing that I have really enjoyed looking at this week, because I obviously came out this way different angle, as usual, as we always do, is that I did that whole fun thing of trying to decide, or trying to figure out how many books I need to sell in order to make a certain amount of money a year.

And I did a spreadsheet which I would look up at, my laptop has now turned itself off.

So, yeah, I did the whole spreadsheet of this is like, if I want to make 20 grand a year, I did like low numbers just so that I couldn't see like a whole selection of income options.

So I did like, if I was going to make five grand a year, this is how much I need to make a month, a week, a day.

This is how many books I'd need to sell every month, week and day.

And it was just really nice to see all the figures broken down.

It seems like such a simple thing.

They're surprisingly low, they're surprisingly small numbers.

Yeah.

Well, for me, they seem big, but at the same time, not.

So it's not like a thousand copies a day, right?

It's not like a thousand copies.

No, no, no, not at all.

I think one of the fun little targets I want to set myself at some point this year is to try and make, because obviously I don't make a lot of money now, so I'm happy to say this.

I just want to set a target of, can I make 200 pounds in a month?

Small target, I'm not making anything near that, and I'm happy to admit I am small potatoes.

And so for me, that means trying to sell 20 paperbacks in a month.

Some people sell that in a day.

I'm not some people.

I'm a little old me.

You're just you, but like, that's all you have to be.

Yeah, exactly.

So that's like my next step.

And it's a small step for other people.

But for me, that's like a big step.

And as soon as I hit that step, then the next step is how to make 400 pounds a month, how to make 500 pounds.

So I'm really happily at this stage where I've got a very visual thing that I can look at and be like, okay, I can see it's kind of like having a vision board and telling like same mantras every day.

It's like the repetition of looking at something feels more achievable.

The more you look at it, the more it seems like you're making it your reality.

I know this is the woo woo part of the podcast where we talk about manifesting every time.

We don't believe in manifesting.

We believe in manifesting.

And yet we manifest the hell out of everything.

But yeah, I want to put those numbers on my wall.

I put everything on my wall.

I'm going to put those numbers on my wall.

I'm going to look at them every day.

And it's just something, it's just the next target to reach.

But it was really fun, and I recommend everyone do that.

Everybody make the spreadsheet or however you want to do it, to see how much you need to make per month, per week, per day, in order to achieve an annual income of however much you want to make.

For me, I think my first target would be just to try and replace my income.

So like around 30-odd grand would be great.

So that's, yeah, that's like my first target is, can I reach that?

And I really like to have that target.

I feel like I am impassioned.

I am inspired to be able to look at those numbers and think that's, it's not impossible.

Other people do it.

Other people do it.

I can do it.

And I think once you, like definitely it feels so different having regular sales come in.

And just like, sales, I have done something, like a lever I have pulled.

I have done ads and I'm making so many.

Your levers are back.

I mean, who knew there were levers on this machine?

I feel like you're like Willy Wonka with all those buttons.

That's why whenever you say levers, I think it's like buttons and it's like the magic elevator with all, isn't it like in the elevator, the glass elevator with all the buttons?

Yeah, but like three weeks ago, I was like, where are the buttons?

I mean, there's no buttons here.

What are we going to do?

But it feels like now, yeah, numbers are a thing I could work towards.

Yeah, so I have also recently done that same calculation of thinking if I wanted to not even just replace my income, I want to have like a good salary that is higher than I have now that I think feels like a great, reliable full-time salary.

How many copies a day would have to sell?

And that's like, how many at profit, right on top of covering costs?

And it was, I can't remember where it came from, so it might be based on the wrong number, but like something like 50 copies, right?

Which is like, sounds big, but also that's not that many books.

That's like, you know, if you had successful ads, it's like, oh, that's actually, that's a number.

Like 50 people, you could find 50 people in the entire globe per day.

Okay, I could do that.

And I'm no where near right now, but so it doesn't feel like, oh, I'll do it tomorrow.

That feels like, but it feels like, okay, all I have to do is start with like five, and then seven, and then 10.

And it's like, oh, that's how you get to 50.

But if you think about ads, when ads get distributed, and you see how many views ads have a day, your ads get thousands of views a day.

You only need to get like 50 of those people to buy.

So it's just, the math's maths itself, and you just have to throw yourself in the middle and try and figure something out.

Yeah, but you should have to be at the stage where you can kind of start to see like, oh, I can do things, not just sometimes you will buy a book.

I don't know who they are, where they come from.

Sometimes they just click on things.

Yeah.

So that feels very different this year.

I did have one other thing that I want to talk about on this front, but I don't know what it was.

So maybe it all saved on the next time.

It was something about about ads and budgets.

No, we don't know.

I think one thing that doesn't feel great is, and this is something people are well aware of, is that the lack between paying Facebook ads and getting money back from Amazon.

So I think it feels quite nice to kind of start at a low number and then see, I just want to like have that proof of concept.

So that's part of guidelines.

It's like have that proof of concept of you put money and it doesn't disappear into a black hole of Mark Zuckerberg's pocket.

That's when it will come back from Jeff Bezos' pocket with money added to it.

So that is feeling nice right now.

That sense of money will be returning.

And, you know, I've got savings.

I think I might even get a credit card just to have it on there rather than take out savings of high interest and then pay it off quickly.

You know, as needed.

So that feels like a doable thing again, like a reliably doable thing.

So that's kind of where I'm at right now, which is nice.

I will maybe have more updates by next week on how many books I've sold.

I'm definitely aiming to have like hit the 100 pre-order mark by next week.

So you'll hopefully hear that success.

I don't know.

Everybody listening, please go and pre-order it.

Help.

No, no, I want only Cozy Readers.

Okay, yeah, but only Cozy Readers, yeah.

Yes, if you're like a well reader of crazies, yeah, and it feels doable.

I'm going to make 100 by next week.

I'll do that, which was like the most comforting thing I've ever said about numbers in my life in terms of sales numbers, so fantastic.

It's funny because even though I'm releasing a book in April, I feel like I'm really doing it to service because I'm not really, I'm already past it, I'm already on to the next book.

But after your goals and everything that you've been doing for your books recently, I have already started trying to manifest this for my book release in September.

So I'm learning so much from you.

And that's so much fun.

And thank you, thank you for doing all the like work.

I mean, you're doing all the TikTok like work.

So all the like researching how to make good videos.

So I will also be learning from that.

And we do just make such a good team.

So we were talking beforehand, we're doing something, something markete later in the year for the podcast.

And we have both talked about it maybe like a month ago, talked about like, oh, here's the things we need to prepare for it and then made no plan because it doesn't need doing right now.

And then today we just started chatting.

I was like, oh, I prepare the tech side of it.

And Sam was like, oh, I prepared the visual side of it.

And we both had things to share straight away.

So it is one of my favorite things about working with you is that you are you always just show up, right?

And I feel like I have people in my life who they might fail last minute or they might be late.

And I so hate that.

It's my least favorite thing.

And it's just like it shows you're not taking something seriously.

And it's so nice to have someone that I think takes this as seriously as I do and is willing to like, things don't feel like a chore because they're both working on something together, both working on like, we want to make this marketing thing.

It's not our job.

It's like, we wish it was our job.

And so that's so, and we do it after our jobs.

Yeah, I love it so much.

It's crazy how much I've, at the end of last year, I kind of, I think I was not burnt out, but you know, just the end of the year was a bit blur.

And then the start of this year, I've fallen back in love with the idea of indie authorship and publishing.

It's like, I'm starting to re-feel the feelings that I felt when I first started.

And I thought like, oh, this is going to work.

And then obviously years batted me down.

But now at the point again, we're like, oh my God, this is so much fun and this is going to work.

It's so exciting.

Like I really, every time I sit down at my computer, or like look at any of the spreadsheets that I've got, all the posts, it's all over my walls.

I'm looking at it and thinking like this is it.

I get it.

This is it.

This is me.

Yeah, I turn this into a musical.

I mean, no one's made that one before, right?

I did have one more thing I wanted to say before I do the outro, which is that I wanted to ask your opinion.

I've already got, I've written most of my decision up, but if you've got a different, strong opinion, let me know.

So, you know, I've got my reward chart on my fridge, which has got one, two, three, four rewards on, and I have to hit a certain day, a daily income goal to get that reward.

I think if I make enough pre-orders, I would zoom all the way to four.

So I've hit number one, I would zoom all the way to four, but I feel that's cheating, and I should only be able to get one reward at a time.

So I should have to stick at two and then hit the income goal again for three.

Would you agree with this, or would you say, go straight for goal number four?

You've made it.

Oh, no, no, no, I wouldn't know.

I am very much, I love to eke out the rewards.

I'm like, what is it when you delayed gratification person?

Yes, I love delayed gratification.

So I would say, yeah, you cannot go all the way to the end.

You have to hit them individually.

Sorry, but not sorry.

It's just more fun.

That is fine.

I'm going to hit the income goal.

So this is like how to make a six figure income, but the daily goal for that.

So obviously, on a release, you can do that as a one off, but I want to obviously do it as like day to day.

So I think I could hit the income goal for that with this release.

Not necessarily definitely, but I think I could do.

But I won't.

I won't take it off my chart.

I will maybe put a little dot on the chart.

Like, here's the highest point I've got to, but I can't cross it off.

So my next goal that I will definitely achieve when I get to my release is new bedding.

So I'm going to always start looking for new bedding.

I love new bedding so much.

It is just an absolute joy and such an inexpensive, wonderful joy.

And I haven't had new bedding for a couple of years, and I have some really good bedding that hasn't got old, so I haven't needed to, but I was like, I want to buy just the bedding because I want to.

So that is my next rule that I'm going to get myself.

That will be getting in February.

And then next goal after that is absolutely nonsense.

One is a unicorn on my KitchenAid.

So I should be getting that made with a release following that with the March book.

And then maybe the April book, I'll be able to get the cat litter robot.

So exciting.

I can't believe that's what you said as your final goal.

But before we start the recording of the podcast, I had to leave the room before we start to hit record to go and get a cat litter.

So imagine if I had a robot doing that for me.

That's very true.

I mean, they should be on my side.

Yeah, they would.

They would.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, that's fine.

Each to their own.

I think everyone would like a robot to help with their manual chores around the house.

That is what the Jetsons Tour does, and I think it is true.

Okay.

We are talking about the opposite situation next week.

So next week, we're talking about how to afford things when you haven't got any money.

How do we do that?

Do you have any thoughts on how to do something that sounds impossible?

I'm so good at doing things without spending money.

I am such a skin flim.

So yes, I think that I'll be able to bring a lot to the table.

I know there's always a big conversation around, you know, like I'm a fledgling indie author.

I don't have money to spend on X, Y, and Z.

How do I do it?

And I always want to, I just always want to go into the conversations and say, this is how you do it.

But then you just get involved in a load of random internet conversations.

So I don't, but yeah, I know how to do a lot of things on a very tight budget.

So I'm excited to talk about that.

How about you?

Well, I feel like I, I think interestingly, I don't spend huge amounts on my publishing processes.

Like I don't have really expensive covers.

I don't have a really expensive editor of multiple sets of editing because I work as my day job, part of my day job.

So I've never felt the need to do that.

And I think, again, partly, we'll talk about it at the following week, we'll talk about like how to spend money.

Partly, I haven't been like in a, in a mental place to make an investment in my, in my writing.

So I'm very fortunate that I have a cover designer who is both incredibly cheap and really good and really fast.

She's like, she beats the triangle of things you can have.

She's all three sides.

So great.

But I, you know, I previously had a different cover designer who was maybe slightly less to genre, who I could have gone for more expensive person instead of them.

But this is what I need right now.

And the same for my editors.

I could have had things like a developmental editor, which I haven't had.

And I, I know people who have, who those people who start more professionally, they start with a developmental editor and it's like, oh, I didn't even think about that.

So I think I've got good advice to give on like, maybe if you are going to spend some money, here's how you might choose to spend it and how you might, what you might want to value and what's kind of a good thing to get if you're going to spend some money.

Maybe we should decide.

I'm not a skillshare person.

So I have not been like to the whole, like swapping skills with people because I don't like to talk to people.

Maybe we should set ourselves before we like do this, we can talk about like cheap ways to do things, but if you only had 100 pounds, what would you spend it on?

No.

Okay.

Yeah.

Let's set some real money goals.

Okay.

That is a good amount of money because that's a reasonable amount of money that you could think, I can save that and I can spend it.

Because if you are really living on a small budget, any money is going to feel like you could spend on something else, right?

You could be like, I could be spending it on more heat for my house this winter.

I could be spending it on nice, you know, I like a really frivolous, like a nicer presence people, even if you're not thinking about like just literal being able to afford food.

When you, I have been in a position of not having a lot of money before.

So it's like I, you're constantly making choices.

And are you going to choose to spend this £100 on your publishing?

Great.

But then how are you going to spend that?

Yeah, that's a good, yeah, target set.

We will be hopping in to the discord after this.

We will, you know, once this podcast is out, people can feel free to chime in if you've got any ideas.

And we'll be setting our question of the week, which is about, have you got any thoughts on your own production and marketing budgets?

And I think a useful thing is maybe how has that changed throughout your career?

So even if you're like, like I think a lot of people are in our discord, not making huge amounts of money right now.

But to get to the stage where you're at or to get to your next stage, how are you changing how you think about spending these things?

And what are some good and bad thoughts we may have had around that?

Feel free to hop into Discord to chat about these things with us.

We also chat about all sorts of things.

We've even got a chat channel for just like, I'm not writing well today.

I need some help.

Who's going to motivate me?

The link is in our show notes.

And we are Pen to Paycheck Authors everywhere, so you can find us for any other irreverent social media.

And do please subscribe, tell your friends, and listen next week.

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